Inside the O'Briens

by Lisa Genova

  This was never his plan. His plan was to work for thirty-five years and retire at the young age of fifty-five, to live the good life he earned with Rosie, to enjoy their grandkids, to earn a full pension that would take care of both of them and then Rosie through old age after he’s gone. He can’t make it to fifty-five. Not even close. He’ll get a partial pension, maybe some disability. Maybe not. He’ll use up his sick time and whatever time his fellow officers might generously donate to him. And then what? Rosie will still be a young woman with no one providing for her. And Joe’s future medical expenses could cost them everything.

  He doesn’t want to go home and tell Rosie what’s going on. He doesn’t want to deliver one more piece of bad news to her world. He can’t stand being the source of her pain. And their kids are going through a perverse and unimaginable hell over this. He’s spent his life protecting the city of Boston, and his very existence has put his own children in harm’s way. Unless medical science comes up with something fast, JJ and Meghan are going to die young because of him. The light in Joe’s soul dims every time this reality enters his consciousness, killing him a little every day.

  This time of year is brutal. Joe knows exactly what Donny’s referring to. It’s January, just after the holiday season, a time for family and gift giving and celebration for most, a time of unbearable depression for others. The days are cold and dark by four thirty. Joe and Donny have responded to a lot of suicides over the years, and winter is sadly the most popular season. Joe won’t miss that part of his job. Discovering the bodies. Sometimes the body parts. A teenager overdoses on heroin. A mother swallows a bottle of prescription pills. A father leaps off the Tobin. A cop eats his gun.

  That last one is how he’d do it, if suicide were his plan.

  CHAPTER 26

  Joe and Rosie are sitting in the law office of Christopher Cannistraro, waiting for him to get off the phone. Chris is Revere’s “famous” ambulance chaser, but he also dabbles in real estate, family law, disability. He’s got one of those cheesy commercials airing ad nauseam on daytime television, a close-up of Chris with his gel-slicked black hair and shiny face staring directly into the camera, pledging to fight if you or anyone you know has been injured in an accident. Joe imagines he was aiming to sound sincere and determined, a noble champion of the wronged, but in Joe’s opinion, he comes off as a sleazeball.

  But Joe would never go to some lawyer he didn’t know from Adam. With the exception of district attorneys, lawyers as a category make him uneasy. DAs are on the same side as the police, so they’re okay in Joe’s book. The rest of them strike Joe as greedy, fast-talking scammers at best. The worst are the public defenders. Joe knows they’re a necessary cog in the wheel of justice, but that doesn’t keep Joe’s blood from boiling every time they get some scumbag off on a ridiculous technicality when anyone with a brain cell knows the guy did it. All that police work wasted because some lawyer with a twisted moral compass in a cheap suit thinks he’s the star of friggin’ Law & Order. Joe honestly doesn’t know how they sleep at night.

  But Chris isn’t a public defender. He and Donny met at Wonderland, used to bet on the dogs and celebrate any winnings together over pizza at Santarpio’s. Chris helped Donny through his divorce, got him joint custody, and kept him from getting financially raped by Donny’s ex. If Donny trusts him, that’s good enough for Joe. He won’t need a second opinion.

  Chris’s desk is cluttered with so many stacks of manila folders, Joe can only see him from the shoulders up. He’s wearing a gray suit, white shirt, and blue tie, a pencil balanced on his right ear, reading something on the screen of his outdated, large desktop computer while he listens and loudly “yah”s and “uh-huh”s to whoever is talking on the phone. The bookcase next to Joe is packed with impressive-looking textbooks. Joe wonders whether Chris has read any of them, or whether they’re just for show. He suspects the latter.

  Joe checks his watch and Chris notices. Chris holds up his index finger and lets the person on the other end know he’s got to go.

  “Sorry about that,” says Chris, standing and offering his hand to Rosie and then to Joe.

  “No problem,” says Joe. “Thanks for seeing us.”

  Chris pulls a folder from the top of one of the piles and shuffles through the papers inside it. He then shuts the folder, returns it to the top of the pile, and taps his fingers on his desk as if playing chords on a piano, a silent musical prelude.

  “Okay,” he says finally. “This isn’t my area of expertise, but I promise I’ve done my homework and looked into all your options. Here’s what you’re looking at. You’ve put in twenty-five years. You’re on desk duty now. I don’t know how much longer you can stay on, but you need to leave before they terminate you. I can’t stress that enough. You get fired, you get nothing. And yeah, we have GINA now and could sue them, but you don’t wanna spend the time you got left hangin’ out with me.”

  GINA, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, makes it illegal for employers to terminate an employee based on genetic information. Of course, it’s still perfectly legal for any employer to fire someone if he can’t do his job safely and effectively. Someone like Joe.

  “No, I don’t. No offense,” says Joe.

  “Hey, most days, I don’t wanna hang out with me either. So you quit before they fire you.”

  Joe nods.

  “You’ll use all of your sick time first. How much you got?”

  “Ten months. I can probably get some more from my fellow officers.”

  “Then you go out on Ordinary Disability Retirement. You’ll get thirty percent pension.”

  “Thirty? That’s it?”

  “ ’Fraid so.”

  Joe looks over at Rosie, her mouth hanging open and wordless, her face drained of color. He suspects he’s got the same dumb expression painted on his. Full retirement is eighty percent. They can barely make ends meet on what he’s pulling home now. He hasn’t seen a raise in years. Thirty percent. How is Rosie going to live on that? He assumed he wouldn’t get full pension, but he was hoping for more than this. Twenty-five years of sacrifice and service, and it only adds up to a miserable 30 percent. Joe doesn’t know whether to cry or throw the heaviest law book on the shelf at Chris’s slick head.

  “Fuck,” says Joe.

  “I hear ya. Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it. Here’s the kicker. Looking at what’s ahead for you healthwise and assuming you’ll need assisted living, your entire retirement pension, what little it is, will end up going to a nursing home or the state if you go to a state hospital.” Chris pauses. “If you stay married.”

  Chris again taps his fingers on the desk, invisible piano keys plinking a suspense-building musical interlude, and waits. Joe scratches his stubbled face and rubs his eyes. He replays what Chris just said in his head, trying to figure out which part was more incomprehensible.

  “What are you sayin’?” asks Joe.

  “I’m saying the only way to protect your thirty percent pension from being handed over to nursing care or the state will be to get divorced. You need to sign over one hundred percent of your pension to Rosie, deed the house and any other assets to her, too. Basically, we have to leave you with nothing and Rosie with everything. Otherwise, it’ll be gone. They’ll take it all.”

  Joe and Rosie sit in horrified silence. He thought they came to this appointment with his eyes open, braced for any possibility, prepared to make some hard legal decisions about their future. Disability. Power of attorney. Advance directives. Feeding tube. DNR—Do Not Resuscitate. But he didn’t anticipate this. Not for a second. He feels completely unprepared, as if he’d been looking out for a train scheduled to approach on the eastbound track and they’ve just been annihilated by the westbound freighter he never saw coming.

  “No,” says Rosie, her arms crossed. “We’re not doing that. We can’t get divorced. There has to be another way.”


  Joe takes a moment to process this new information, a scenario he never considered but should have. He nods to himself. There’s no friggin’ justice in it, but it’s the right thing to do. He’s not taking Rosie down with him. If getting divorced is how he can protect and provide for her, however unfair and fucked up that is, he’s doing it. He refuses to leave her widowed and bankrupt on top of it.

  “It’s just on paper, hun.”

  “Are you crazy? No. This is completely ridiculous. And it’s a sin. My parents would turn over in their graves.”

  “It won’t be real in our hearts or in the eyes of God. I think we need to listen to Chris, here.”

  “No way. I’m not divorcing you, Joe. That’s just nuts. I think we should talk to someone else. This guy doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  Joe glances at Chris, ready to apologize for Rosie’s offensive comment, but Chris’s expression is unperturbed. He’s probably heard a lot worse.

  “Chris, can we have a minute alone?” asks Joe.

  “Sure.”

  Chris checks something on his computer screen, then spins his chair around, gets up, and leaves his office, shutting the door behind him.

  “Rosie, it’s not real. It’s just a piece of paper. It doesn’t mean anything.” Joe hears himself, and suddenly he’s a defense attorney, arguing technicalities.

  “Our marriage certificate is a piece of paper. It means something,” says Rosie, her voice pursued by fear and anger.

  “Rosie, waking up next to you every day for twenty-six years means something. Raising our four beautiful kids means something. Telling you I love you every day while I can still speak means something. This piece of paper just protects you. It keeps the money I earned for us in your pocket instead of the state’s. It means nothing about you and me.”

  He can’t protect JJ and Meghan. He can’t change whatever will happen with Patrick and Katie. But he can do this for Rosie, his beautiful bride, who deserves so much more than 30 percent and a divorce from a husband with Huntington’s. No one deserves a husband with Huntington’s.

  Joe looks down at his hands, at his thirty-five-dollar wedding band, the most valuable thing he owns. They can take his marriage on paper, but they can’t have his ring. They’d have to saw it off his cold, dead finger first. He holds up his left hand and taps his simple wedding band with his thumb. He reaches for Rosie’s left hand and holds it in his.

  “These stay on. God will understand, Rosie. This isn’t a sin. The bigger sin would be to lose the pension and the house and everything to this disease and leave you alone with nothing to take care of you.”

  Tears spill down Rosie’s pale face. She looks into Joe’s eyes, searching for a way out of this dark corner she’s being forced into. Joe squeezes her hand, a gesture meant to assure her that he’s in that corner with her. She squeezes back, holding on tight.

  “Okay,” she whispers.

  “Okay,” he whispers back, pressing his forehead against hers. A perverse version of I do.

  After several minutes of silence, there’s a gentle knock on the door and then it opens a crack. “You need more time?” asks Chris.

  “No,” says Joe. “No, we’re all set.”

  Chris returns to his seat, taps his fingers on his desk, and waits.

  “Okay,” says Joe. “We’ll get divorced.”

  “Really sorry I didn’t have better news for you guys, but I think that’s the smart decision. I’ll draw up those papers right away.”

  “Then what happens?” asks Joe.

  “You’ll both sign. We’ll get a court date. It’s lopsided but uncontested. If the judge has any questions, I’ll explain that you have a terminal illness. It’ll go through. You’ll be legally divorced in”—Chris flips through the pages of his day planner—“three months.”

  Twenty-six years. Undone by a couple of signatures and three months. Joe rubs his chin, digging the pads of his fingers into the rough skin of his face, reminding himself that he’s real, that this decision was about him and Rosie and not some other poor slob, some other lovely wife. It’s the right thing to do. And it doesn’t mean anything.

  As Joe goes to stand to fetch the box of tissues by the bookcase for Rosie, his legs wobble, unable to support the vertical weight of him, as if he no longer has bones, and he grabs on to the edge of Chris’s desk, catching himself from falling. Even though Huntington’s is the reason they’re here in this office, he still feels embarrassed to be so exposed, so physically vulnerable in front of Chris, to be the kind of man who won’t be able to keep his job or his wife, who literally can’t even stand on his own two feet.

  And then it hits him. Agreeing to sign their divorce papers does mean something. Agreeing to divorce Rosie means he’s agreeing to Huntington’s. All of it. They’re preparing for the tail end of this beast. End stage. Joe’s death. The certain reality of his grim future is a two-by-four to his chest and a steel-toed boot to the crotch. Denial has now left the building.

  His service weapon. His job. His wife. His family. His life. He’s going to lose everything.

  Breathless, his pitiful heart feeling heavy and useless, he wants to surrender, to slip alone into a black tar pit of defeat. But then Rosie’s standing beside him, her face still wet with tears, holding on to his arm. She’s steadying him, assuring him that he’s not alone, and the bones restack in Joe’s legs; his heart remembers itself.

  Their divorce means something, but it doesn’t mean everything. HD is going to take his gun, his job, his dignity, his ability to walk, his words, his life. It’s eventually going to take JJ and Meghan. But he’ll be damned if it takes Rosie from him. Whatever the Commonwealth of Massachusetts says, whatever a judge or even God decrees, whatever HD takes from him, nothing can take away his family or his love for Rosie. He’ll love Rosie until the day he dies.

  CHAPTER 27

  Felix is leaving for Portland on Monday. Not for good. He’s only going for the week to help with setting up the new office, interviewing some potential new employees from the West Coast, meeting with the mayor and various people in Energy, Waste Management, and City Planning, preparing for the Big Move.

  The Big Move is happening June first, four months from now, and Felix has already begun packing up his apartment. Katie is curled up on his couch, drinking Chardonnay, watching him remove books from his bookcase, stacking them into cardboard boxes.

  “You wanna watch a movie?” she asks.

  “Yeah, lemme just finish up this shelf.”

  “I don’t get why you’re doing that now.”

  “One less thing I have to do later.”

  She shakes her head, not comprehending him. If she were in charge of packing, those books might get thrown into boxes four days before the move, but not a minute before then. It’s not simply that she’s a procrastinator. What kind of person wants to live in a living room full of brown cardboard boxes for four months? What if he wants to read one of those books before June? She shakes her head again. She imagines all of her books packed into moving boxes, and her stomach sours. If she were moving to Portland in four months . . . The sentence hurts too much to finish it.

  “What do you think about next week?” asks Felix, holding a copy of Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick.

  “Whaddaya mean?” asks Katie, playing dumb.

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “I dunno. I’d have to find subs for all my classes, and it’s kind of last minute.”

  “Jesus, Katie. You’ve known about this trip for weeks. You’re totally dragging your feet. I think you don’t want to come, and you’re afraid to tell me.”

  She’s afraid of a million things right now.

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then come with me. We’ll explore Portland together, see what’s there. You’ll love the microbreweries. We can go hiking, maybe find a cool space fo
r your yoga studio. And we need to look for an apartment. The move is coming up fast, and we still don’t have a place to live.”

  She winces without meaning to with every “we” and hopes he didn’t see her. He “we”s her all the time. He’s being positive and hopeful, even charmingly persuasive if she’s in the right mood, but today each “we” rubs her the wrong way, a bra strap on a sunburn, a callous assumption on the edge of bullying.

  She hasn’t told him she’s not going.

  “I’m okay with you picking out an apartment without me.”

  “I think we should do that together. Let’s go find a place, and then we can really start imagining our future there.”

  The only place she can imagine her future with any clarity is in a nursing home. And there’s no “we” there.

  “I’m not sure I’m coming,” she says, tiptoeing toward the real answer.

  Felix stops packing and rubs his bottom lip with his thumb. He has beautiful lips.

  “Do you mean Monday or June?”

  Katie hesitates. She doesn’t want to talk about June. She wants to drink wine, snuggle on the couch, and watch a movie.

  “Both.”

  Felix pinches his lips. He stares at her hard, as if he’s trying to see through her eyes, into her mind or maybe her soul. Or maybe he’s trying to see whether he sees Huntington’s in her eyes.

  “This is about HD,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  He leaves the books and boxes and sits down next to Katie on the couch.

  “What about HD is keeping you from coming with me to Portland on Monday?”